Human Weakness
by Bons Baisers
Summary: Sesshoumaru finds himself the unlucky captive of a demoness with a truly nasty disposition. When he is joined by Inuyasha's fiesty companion, he discovers he has a lot of reconsidering to do. Character development for Takahashi's prettyboy nonpareil.


Inuyasha and hisworld are the property of Rumiko Takahashi.

**Human Weakness**

A thin rivulet of blood trickled down the side of Sesshoumaru's face, producing an unpleasant, crawling sensation that raised gooseflesh along his neck and upper arms. He sat braced against the dirt wall of his prison, carefully preserving what strength remained to him, far too self-possessed to toy with the instrument of his subjugation.

But his awareness of the loathsome collar that chained him here never faded. The steel pressed closely against his throat, resting heavily on his collarbone. In his normal state, he wore far weightier armor, and it had never seemed a burden. But Sesshoumaru was not in his normal state, and the collar remained, physically and figuratively, a painful reminder of the fact. When the vile thing had first been settled around his neck, he had struggled to remove it, breaking his fingernails – a singularly disagreeable experience, he had discovered – and causing his captor to actually go so far as to use the collar's magic against him.

That had proven to be an even uglier experience.

For hours afterward, he had lain on the cold earth, at the bottom of the well, gasping for breath against the pain that pulsated through his body long after the one who wielded the magic of the collar had found other amusements.

Sesshoumaru was no stranger to pain. Battle always involved a certain amount of risk, and while he had become powerful enough in recent years to avoid that nasty side of conflict, he remembered weaker days. And he remembered pain. But nothing he had ever suffered could compare to the excruciating torment Katsue had managed to inflict, with little more than a flick of her wrist.

It was different, too, in this form. He had always been able to feel the prickling sensation of healing, the slow alleviation of pain. Now, he could not be entirely certain how much time had passed since the bitch had come to call; it could have been hours, or days, since the pain had retreated enough for him to be conscious of the passage of time.

He felt an unaccountable pleasure that he had never felt inclined to draw out the suffering of the humans who had crossed him in the past. Torture had never been his style, and he felt bizarrely satisfied of the fact now that he found himself at Katsue's mercy. There could be no call, and therefore no excuse, for such cruelty.

A scrap of bloodied orange cloth had been neatly folded into his obi, and he pulled it from its quay with particular care. When he had first encountered Rin, her face had been a swollen mess of contusions and infected scrapes. Even at that time, something had stirred within him concerning the human capacity to suffer. What would have been a moment's passing twinge for him must have been weeks of throbbing recovery for her.

With surprise, he realized he felt thankful that the blood on this scrap of Rin's kimono was his, and that Katsue had not been able to exact any from his small charge.

What strange things the child had done to him. What a peculiar way in which to be like his father.

Yet, he could feel no regret. The restlessness in his soul had calmed considerably since Rin had come into his life. He was simply, but profoundly, grateful. Katsue had relinquished the single best means to cause him distress when she permitted Jaken to take Rin and Ah-Un away, though she had not yet recognized her mistake. And it was far, far too late. Jaken was a coward. If he did not wish to be found, he would not be found.

And so, neither would Rin. Sesshoumaru gently fingered the bloody cloth before returning it to his obi.

His thoughts returned to how he might escape his prison. The blunt, fragile human fingernails that tipped his fingers were of no use to him; half of them he had broken off in his initial struggle against the collar. The body itself was pathetically weak; a single bound from his normal form could have sent him straight into the heavens. Now he could scarcely manage to hold his head upright, let alone leap out of the pit, an abandoned well which was easily twenty feet deep. The walls were just a bit too far apart to crawl up between them, legs braced against opposing walls, though he had attempted it, at first.

All about him lay the bones of his predecessors. The thought crossed his mind that if he were to perish down here, the collar would ensure that his bones remained those of a weak human being, and his body would not revert to his true demon's form.

He shook the thought away. Giving up would be the true failure, and he was not inclined to do so.

Sesshoumaru permitted a small, sour frown to twist his mouth as he realized just who had taught him that lesson.

He had not long to linger over it, however, because above, the squirming, shrieking form of a woman had been thrust precariously over the lip of the well. He peered upward, more interested in the change of scenery than in whom his fellow prisoner might be.

His lack of interest did not long remain, for the woman was soon shoved unceremoniously into the well. She screamed all the way down, and landed a few feet away from him.

It was the girl Inuyasha traveled with. The Higurashi girl.

His eyes narrowed against her, warning her that they were no more friends in this shared predicament than they would have been in any other situation.

She found her way to a sitting position, although not without a few faint whimpers. He stared at her indifferently, daring her to speak.

She did, but he was not prepared for her ironic half-smile – quickly followed by a wince of pain – or the friendly introduction and hand she proffered.

"Hi, there. I'm Kagome. What's your name?"

He looked at her, silent. She did not recognize him. Of course, she would not, he realized; his clothes were different, his hair and eyes dark, his markings vanished, his ears and teeth and nails all hatefully human, because of the cursed collar.

Her face fell at the lack of response, and she withdrew her outstretched hand. "That's okay. You don't look like the type who talks much anyway."

She crawled a bit closer, flinching as she settled weight on bones and muscles the fall had injured. "You're hurt. Let me help."

She reached for his obi, presumably to pull it off and open the green kimono Katsue had "insisted" he wear. He raised his arm and firmly knocked her hand away.

Clutching the offended member to herself, she pulled away a little, and for the first time, he saw the flicker of fear in her eyes. Good, he thought, uncharacteristically savage. At least she would stay away.

"That wasn't nice," she said finally. "I was only trying to help." Pursing her lips, she snatched at his obi. This time, to his humiliation, she proved the quicker. She yanked the white obi away, and the robes fell open to reveal the ugly mass of welts and bruises beneath.

"Oh," she whispered sympathetically. The concern in her tone aggravated him, and he opened his mouth to order her away, but she had turned away from him, fumbling with a yellow sack that had come down with her.

"Please don't fight with me, mister." She set a white box down in front of her. "Those really need to be taken care of."

He could have spat at her that Katsue would only rip through whatever bandages and ointments she might have brought, but he did not get the opportunity.

"No, I don't think so, dear. He needs time to consider the ramifications of having crossed me." Katsue's voiced called down to them mockingly.

"I just want to bandage these injuries," the girl protested.

"No."

The Higurashi girl stared up at the demon in disbelief. "But he's in pain…" At Katsue's amused expression, the girl became angry. "You… you evil person!" He half expected her to stamp her foot and demand release.

When she pounded a fist on the ground and insisted upon being freed, he raised his brows. The girl was wearing a collar, identical to his. If she was not careful, Katsue would chasten her for her childishness.

The Higuarshi girl fell suddenly to her knees, screaming, and Sesshoumaru's disdain for the girl quickly turned to anger with his captor. He said nothing, however. Protests had no effect on one like Katsue. If anything, objection would encourage her.

The torment continued for several minutes, and even Sesshoumaru had difficulty schooling his features as the animated, spirited girl writhed on the ground beside him, shrieking whenever she had the breath, screaming silently when she did not. Finally Katsue's vindictiveness was satisfied; the girl lay in a crumpled heap, panting and crying at the bottom of the well. Broken sobs escaped her lips as shock, pain, and fear vied for dominance in her soul.

She shivered against the chill earth, when finally she could think through the pain enough to be cold.

"Upsetting Katsue is not a wise thing to do," he noted. Not certain why he felt compelled to warn her, he did so anyway, trusting to his instincts.

The girl glared at him, and he was surprised to find as much fire and defiance in her eyes as he did. "Gosh. Thanks, mister, for the warning," she retorted sarcastically, pushing herself to her knees. That also surprised him; he had lain helpless for an hour or more before he had recovered enough from Katsue's first punishment to be able to rise. He concluded that the force exerted on him through his collar must have been greater than that exerted on the girl.

Her eyes locked onto his collar, and the coldness that had taken over her demeanor faded. "Oh. She put one on you, too."

Not for the first time, he wished that scowling was not such a boorish thing to do. He would have liked to have scowled at her ridiculous sense of compassion.

She handed him his obi back, along with the scrap of Rin's kimono. "Here. I'm sorry." Looking at the white box as he retied his obi and tucked the scrap into it, she sank against the wall opposite him, pulling her knees to her chest. A little flash of pink suggested that her undergarments were visible; he looked away, uninterested. "I'll still bandage those injuries of yours, if you want me to."

He froze, startled into disbelief. Surely she was not foolish enough to tempt Katsue again?

Her ironic smile was back in place, though he could see the effort it cost her to force it there. "I don't much care for bullies."

"It is unnecessary," he said after a moment.

"Would you be terribly disappointed if I told you that I'm glad you said that?" She swallowed hard, and he noticed how very pale she was. Was it possible the collar had inflicted the same kind of damage on her as he had suffered?

No, even in this human form, he must be able to withstand more pain that this little human girl. Still, the obvious show of endurance raised her a notch in his estimation.

"Don't worry," she said quietly. She had closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around her legs to ward off the cold. "My friends will be missing me, soon. They'll get us out of here."

He almost laughed with derision, but managed to keep his doubts concerning his younger half-brother to himself. Though not entirely sure why, he knew he did not want the girl to find out his true identity. Perhaps it was simply that she had found him in a rather embarrassing predicament. Or perhaps it was because he knew that if Inuyasha did manage to rescue her, he would be vulnerable to the half-demon's contempt. He contented himself with relaxing into the earthen wall and turning his mind once more to matters of escape.

"How closely are we being watched, do you think?" The girl's voice had a musing, thoughtful tone to it. He frowned, unappreciative of the interruption.

"How should I know?"

She shrugged. "You've been here longer than me. You don't seem unintelligent; I thought you'd be figuring out a way to escape."

He blinked at her, suddenly confounded. He had only really considered how he could get out of the pit; the thought that he would somehow have to pass the guards had not crossed his mind. In his other form, fighting them would have been simplicity itself.

But the girl had a point. Without any real knowledge of their guards' actions, a viable retreat could not be arranged. A little discomfited by this understandable, but inexcusable flaw in his own thinking, he closed his eyes against the girl's piercing gray stare.

"I saw four guards," she offered, her voice barely a whisper. "Two of them were further away than the others, so if we want out, we'll have to silence the two closer ones before they can call for help."

He cracked open an eye. She could not mean to attack a demon with that puny body of hers. Especially considering that the collar was likely to be sealing her holy power as effectively as it sealed his demonic aura.

"And Katsue?" he reminded her.

She waved that concern away. "She left you – she must have, because she grabbed me. It's a precedent. She could leave again."

An indelicate snort belied his scorn for her guesswork.

"I don't see you coming up with any ideas," she snapped.

"You refuse to be quiet long enough to let me think." The remark bought him a few moments' peace.

His quiet was disturbed suddenly by a loud crack, like the breaking of a tree branch. Sighing inwardly, he opened his eyes again to view the young woman.

She had taken one of the many bones that littered the well and snapped it neatly in half. Smiling to herself, she jammed one of the bones into the side of the wall, until nothing but the knob could be seen. Then she stabbed the other one into the earth beside it.

He could have hit himself for his lack of vision. Overwhelmed by the loss of his superior abilities and senses, he had not bothered to look beyond himself for a means to climb out of the well. In a few minutes, she had developed a simple, easy means of escaping the pit, and thought ahead to overtaking their guards.

It occurred to him that adjusting to this human state required a different way of thinking, as much as it required becoming accustomed to the biting limitations of his strange body. With a flash of insight, he realized that his Inuyasha understood this duality of mindset on a far, far deeper level than he could.

Not that it made any difference to Sesshoumaru. But it was interesting to note.

"Katsue is still up there. And there is no guarantee that you will have any notice of her leaving."

"No one is looking over the edge right now, so I'll just climb up and peek over the top."

He waited for the inevitable chastisement Katsue would unleash on the girl, with a surprising sense of remorse, but it did not come. The girl scrambled quickly, if rather gracelessly, up the side of the well. Unfortunately, the bone crumbled in her hand before she had made her back down, and she landed in a messy tumble of short green skirt and tangled black hair.

"She's still skulking around up there, mostly picking on her men," she reported, breathing heavily. He grit his teeth, feeling curiously irritated that such a short climb had winded her. "She really isn't very nice."

"Keep your inane observations to yourself."

She rolled her eyes. "You really aren't very nice, either, considering that I don't have to help you."

"I do not recall having asked for your help."

"Too bad. I don't leave people with dangerous demons. Call it a character flaw." She stretched, wincing a little. "This collar of hers is a doozy. I think I may have to take Inuyasha's off after this."

Did she never stop talking?

Another bone cracked across the girl's knee; she jabbed the pointed end of one half into the earthen wall and repeated the motion with the other half. Swinging precariously, she took herself to the top again. This time, she didn't fall.

"Still there. The guards seem pretty lazy though. I wonder if we could catch them sleeping?" She seemed to be half thinking to herself, and half speaking to him.

"They will pick up your scent long before you can escape. And even if they did not, Katsue could locate you by that collar. Your friend will not be able to stop her."

"My friend has this amazing ability to not give up." She frowned at him. "You could learn something from him."

That was truly offensive. He had at no point suggested they not attempt escape. He only pointed out the flaws in her plans. And to be estimated as less worthy than the half-blood, well, that was just insulting.

"It is foolish to fight a battle you cannot win. It is even more foolish to charge in recklessly, without any thought to the consequences."

"Well, it's stupid to sit around and wait to die, too," the girl countered, somewhat illogically. "You can, if you want to. But I'm not going to."

She sulked in a corner for a few minutes, scratching at the dirt floor with what looked like a finger bone. It wasn't long before she picked up her bones again, and scaled the sides of the wall a third time. When she returned, she whispered, "She's gone. And one of the guard's looks like he's about to nod off."

Sesshoumaru could not believe the girl's luck, but he still believed Katsue would find out about her escape and thwart it. Until a means of successfully removing the collar could be devised, he saw no way out of their quandary. So it was that he remained in the well while she made her attempt to flee, though she promised, rather curtly, to return for him.

He was right, of course. Within a quarter of an hour, the guards had thrown her down into the well again, and she looked as though she had been through a typhoon. Blood streamed freely all over her body, and she lay absolutely still, unconscious, for a solid hour.

When she woke, she pushed herself into a sitting position, crying out only once as a bloody arm brushed the wall behind her. She fumbled in her bag for her ointments, and then applied them with clumsy fingers. Her shaking hands proved unable to wind the bandages around her injuries. Watching her fumble with the bandages somehow irritated him, and he pulled the linen away from her, and tied them himself. He disliked untidiness, and his peace of mind, what little could be kept in this dilemma, was surely worth a few minutes of his time.

When he had finished, he looked up to find the girl smiling wryly at him. "Thanks."

He shook his head and retreated back to his corner.

"Next time I should make sure that he's really asleep," she mused, looking thoughtfully at Sesshoumaru's neat bandage.

Sesshoumaru blinked. "Next time?" he asked, before he could stop himself.

Her smile broadened a little, until it tugged too painfully at a bruised cheek, and she settled for a small grin. "I'm not out yet, after all. There's got to be a next time."

He stared at her incredulously. "You are the most foolish person I have ever had the misfortune to meet."

With a shrug, she said, "That's alright. I'd rather be a fool than a quitter. Eventually I'll get it right, and we'll get out of here."

Her optimism was strangely heartening. Finding himself at a loss, Sesshoumaru reached for the piece of cloth in his obi, drawing a peculiar comfort from the orange fabric.

"Oh, my. What have we here? I don't seem to remember having given anyone permission to tend injuries. Naughty, naughty," Katsue laughed, shaking a finger in rebuke. "Someone has been a bad dog."

Sesshoumaru barely felt himself fall to the ground, so intense and sudden was the pain that flared in his fingertips, racing along his veins to his heart, his belly, his legs. An eternity passed between every heartbeat, and he waited for each thump with a horrible dread, knowing that a new wave of pain would be carried with it. The girl's piercing shrieks came to his ears muddled, as if carried through heavy mist on an ocean; he could neither place the sound nor assign any specific meaning to the syllables she screamed. It seemed a vague semblance of a language, but he could not comprehend it, and the lack of understanding frightened him as no pain ever could.

Finally the agony quit him, and he lay shaking in the aftermath.

After several minutes, he regained enough presence of mind to realize that the girl had gathered him into her arms, and was whispering quiet platitudes and promises, rocking him like a child. Humiliated, he shoved angrily at her, and got to his feet on shaking legs, fighting to stay erect.

He stared at her, fury rising impotently in his detestable human breast. "Bitch."

She raised an ironic brow, unperturbed. "I guess you're feeling better. That's good." Then her calm demeanor faltered. "I'm sorry you got hurt on my account," she said, in a small voice.

Sesshoumaru stared. He did not understand her, not at all. She refused to be cowed or put off by him. She simply did not know how to gracefully accept defeat, not in anything, not against Katsue's magic or the well or the guards, and not against him.

Her tenacity astounded him, and he would not have credited it had he not witnessed it.

"I'm pretty tired," she said after a moment, and indeed, she sounded exhausted. "I'm going to rest. Inuyasha will find us soon, so don't worry. Someone like Katsue can't stand up to him."

She said it with such simple certainty that he could almost have believed it himself. But the loathsome creature had subdued the first-born son of the Inu no Taisho, a demon lord far, far more powerful than his years warranted.

His younger brother, with his soft, human heart, his lack of experience, and his pitiful, half-breed body, had no hope against Katsue.

He woke with a start to the familiar sound of Inuyasha's brash, irritating puppy's whine. The usual sorts of insults were exchanged between Katsue's flunkies and the half-breed, followed by the swift, deadly whirr of swords, the shouts of pain, and the dull thuds of lifeless bodies hitting the ground.

Sesshoumaru swallowed a yawn, and considered how best to take advantage of Katsue's distraction. It would not last long. Inuyasha would be defeated in short order, and the opportune moment would be brief at best.

His eyes fell on the bones that the Higurashi girl had snapped in half. The girl herself was no longer beside them.

Sesshoumaru looked up and caught that tell-tale flash of pink as his cellmate managed to haul herself out of the hole at last.

"Inuyasha!" she yelled, her voice shrill with fear. "Inuyasha, above you!" A yelp and a thud indicated that her warning had come too late.

"Run, you idiot!" Inuyasha's voice was breathless, not with fatigue, but with pain.

Sesshoumaru snapped one of the long thigh bones in half and followed the girl's admittedly ingenuous lead. The climb was frustrating, as every painfully gained inch was a glaring testament to his shameful impotence, but he grit his teeth and continued. Another yelp rang through the still summer air, and he found himself struggling harder for each foothold, moving more quickly than he had been.

He made his way to the top, and squashed the insane feeling of accomplishment that accompanied his escape from the pit. The girl had recovered her bow, and purifying arrows flew thick and fast from her fingertips. All of Katsue's underlings had fallen.

Sesshoumaru frowned. He didn't see the demon hunter, or the priest, but a dozen or more fairly powerful demons lay dead on the ground. None of them could be attributed to the Higurashi girl; when her purifying arrows found their mark, their target's shattered.

Inuyasha lay panting on his side. A peculiar mixture of pain and determination, pride and fury twisted his mouth into a surprisingly frightening scowl. "You _bitch_," he began, directing his expletive at Katsue, who was advancing on him, but in the middle of his thought, his eyes had captured Sesshoumaru. The golden orbs widened in disbelief as his words fell from his tongue.

"You!"

Shame was an unpleasant emotion, Sesshoumaru thought sourly, staring at his half-brother as impassively as his wounded pride would permit.

He almost winced as Katsue pounced on Inuyasha's split-second distraction. A howl of pain stung his ears, and he felt his lips press together, stifling a momentary regret. Inuyasha should, after all, know better than to look away from his enemy. Gods knew the lack-wit had been given ample opportunities to perfect that simple survival skill.

"Inuyasha!" The girl screamed. Katsue stood over Inuyasha's fallen body, grinning wickedly at a number of unpleasant things she held in her bloody hands. Sesshoumaru was no doctor, despite his legendary sword's reputation, but he was almost positive that some of those things were more or less necessary for the healthy functioning of a human-like body. Similar things existed within him, and he was certain that he would much prefer to keep them inside.

A surge of something hot and unfamiliar welled in his belly, and he paused to consider it. He had felt it before, he remembered having felt it, but he could not name that boiling heat in the pit of his stomach. Until his teeth began to grind together, he could not place the peculiar warmth.

Unbidden, his feet carried him to his captor and her latest victim. Three arrows whizzed past him, but he didn't flinch, strangely confident that, if they did not reach their mark, they would at least miss Inuyasha and himself.

"Come to say goodbye to the puppy-dog, Sesshy?" Katsue's voice was an ugly, rolling purr, low and full of contempt. Inuyasha stirred; she kicked him. "You should thank me for ridding you of this blemish on your father's memory."

Later, he could rationalize no justification for his actions. But that fire was burning in his gut, and his fist and his arm and his whole body thrust itself forward into the bitch's smug, smirking smile. An almost orgasmic rush of pleasure pounded though his body as her sharp little teeth yielded to his weak, human blow, spilling blood over his now-split knuckles.

She shrieked, and slapped at him. He landed hard beside his brother, and bit back a wince as his ribs shattered against the rocky ground.

"Humans," Sesshoumaru said ironically, through teeth clenched tightly in pain, "are weak. You really should stay away from us."

Inuyasha's eyes were dim, the fading light of a dying soul, but they narrowed in contemptously.

"Don't make jokes," he wheezed, his voice barely a whisper. "You're no good at it." A shaking finger gestured toward Sesshoumaru's collar. "That doesn't suit you, either."

"Her idea." Katsue was advancing on them, but neither of them bothered looking at her.

Inuyasha's mouth twisted with disgust. "I don't want to know." He reached for the collar, but jerked his hand away as the enchantments upon the hateful thing repelled him. His fingers were red and blistered.

"You'll only hurt yourself. We all are going to die." Sesshoumaru's tone was clinical, though rage seethed, swift and violent, through his veins.

Inuyasha summoned strength enough to shake his head. "Save her. I'm begging you."

That angered him further, to hear a son of his father begging, but the anger was swept away by agony as Katsue raised her hands to deliver punishment for his insolence. His ribs screamed in protest as his back arched in pain, popping and cracking as their shattered pieces pulled away from one another.

When the fog of the pain cleared, he lay breathless on the ground. But it was different, this time. The pain was receding quickly, very quickly.

Inuyasha was no longer beside him, but a whiff of his scent turned Sesshoumaru's head in time to see Katsue landing blow after infuriated blow on the half-breed. A trail of blood and viscera led from a scant foot before Sesshoumaru's face some forty feet away. Inuyasha had no smart remarks, no arrogant crudities to hurl at her. He said nothing at all. And he wasn't moving.

The pain was gone, entirely. A shrill, piercing scream soared over him, and he flinched as the sound shivered through his tender ears. In that moment, he knew the curse had been broken.

A single bound propelled him to Katsue and Inuyasha. A swipe of his claws shred her stunned, slack-jawed expression from her face; a second destroyed her utterly.

His eyes sought Inuyasha's hands. The rags of the collar hung limply in the burned and blackened fingers, burns that traveled half-way up his forearm.

"Fool," Sesshoumaru murmured. "Sentimental fool."

An uneven rush of feet sounded loud to his ears. "Inuyasha!"

He exhaled heavily in aggravation. She had to have seen him, had to know what had come to pass. And it didn't phase her, not in the slightest. The entirety of her being was focused on his dying brother. She flung herself on the ground beside him, shaking with the fury of her sobs.

He wasn't dead, not just yet. A stubborn heartbeat still shuddered through the battered body, a pulse that grew fainter with each passing moment. One amber eye cracked open, landed on the girl's dark head, and softened. Then it shifted, and caught Sesshoumaru's impassive gaze.

The gratitude there sickened him, and it sickened him further that he couldn't determine whether he was disgusted with his brother for begging, or with himself for acceding to the plea. He seldom lied to himself; he didn't now. Personal vindication had little to do with Katsue's destruction, no matter how he wished it might have. Katsue was dead because his dying brother had asked him to protect the woman he loved, and because the half-breed had given everything he had left to give him the opportunity.

And, most galling of all, because Sesshoumaru would have died without Inuyasha's intervention.

Inuyasha's heartbeat shuddered once more, and failed.

An involuntary shiver ran across his shoulder blades and down his spine as a heartbroken shriek burst from the girl who sobbed over his brother's fallen body, screaming of a loss and a devastation terrible to witness.

Suddenly she launched herself up from the earth and slammed into him, burying her tear-streaked face in his kimono and landing repeated, ineffectual blows like so many drops of rain on his arms and torso; she was angry, because she believed Sesshoumaru would not help him, yet she sought comfort from him anyway. She was, Sesshoumaru thought, with rising frustration, a most illogical sort of person.

"Help him," she sobbed. "Please. I'm begging you. Help him."

The violence of her grief ignited that blaze within him once more. With a firm, but restrained hand, he took her wrist, and forced her to the ground. Her sobs subsided slightly as he drew Tensaiga from its sheath.

She watched him, suspicion and disbelief vying for control of her face. His sword descended in a graceful, almost careless arc, and he sheathed it before turning to walk away.

His brother shifted slightly, not yet recovered from the shock of reentering the world of the living. A whispered 'thank you' reached his ears, directed at his retreating back. He glanced back, met the girl's grey eyes, which blazed with a number of mysterious and unnamable emotions.

"We are not allies," he replied shortly. "I repaid my debts. That is all."

She shook her head, a peculiar smile on her lips. "If that's how you want to see it."

He ignored that and went on his way.

She was right, though. They were not allies, no, but nor could they continue to be enemies. He could not. He had named that fire in his belly, and no amount of self-loathing could deny that it had been there. His father had been a sentimental fool, and his half-human son was no different. So perhaps there was some excuse for Sesshoumaru.

After all, it ran in the family.


End file.
